James Talarico

a few times in my life, but from what I hear, you're

You're really kind of separated physically from your colleagues.

You don't spend a lot of time talking to each other anymore.

It's a lot of fundraising and events and not really a lot of relationship building.

In the state capitol, you don't have the same media scrutiny, the same spotlight.

So we can still get to know each other and go out to eat with each other and meet each other's families.

And I actually think it's something that we could benefit from at the national level is that kind of –

camaraderie and professional working relationships with people across the aisle.

Yeah, the system doesn't encourage that at the national level.

Here, we do not.

I think in D.C., the minority party appoints the committee chairs or ranking members.

Here at the state level, the Speaker of the House, who is elected by Republicans and Democrats, that's the person who decides what committee you're on and what bills you can get passed.

And so in some ways, that forces you to be loyal to the body

Rather than loyalty or party or your caucus.

Again, I'm proud to be part of the Democratic caucus, but I can't I literally can't get anything done if I don't have some kind of Republican support.

And so that just and I get a lot, you know, I'm able to pass a lot of bills as a Democrat.

And it's because I have good relationships with Democrats.

with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

But yeah, on the Ten Commandments issue, it kind of became one of these culture war fights.

And so there wasn't room to have kind of an honest conversation about- When did this get proposed?